


V is for Vengeance

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 05:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4948075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cece reflects on the events that led up to her needing to seek revenge on the Liars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	V is for Vengeance

Even as she had watched her mother drive away, Charlotte hadn’t quite believed that she was going to leave her there in that place. Any minute now, she was going to turn round, say there had been some big mistake and she was going to take Charlotte back home again. There had to have been some mistake. She really hadn’t been trying to drown baby Alison. It was an accident, she’d told Daddy. All she was trying to do was help her. It wasn’t as if she could get Daddy’s attention, and Mommy was talking to that boring woman next door. And she didn’t know what her father was talking about when he said there had been other incidents as well. There hadn’t been anything, only that time when he caught her dressing up in her mother’s clothes. 

She didn’t come back the next day, or the next, or the next. Eventually, Jessica did come back, full of stories about how Alison was growing up, stories about things Jason had done at school. Charlotte used to beg Jessica to bring them to see her one day, and Jessica used to keep saying “Not today, sweetheart. Maybe one day soon.” Eventually, Charlotte’s doctor had intervened and said that maybe it would be a good idea if Jessica did bring Jason and Alison for a visit, that maybe it would do Charlotte some good, so Jessica had agreed to bring them in to see Charlotte on her birthday. It hadn’t gone too well. When Jason had walked in, big smile on his face and squealed “Charlie!” their mother had immediately said “No, honey, this is Frankie, your cousin.” She had then taken Jason aside and said something to him that Charlotte couldn’t hear. Jason had looked confused, but had gone along with it, calling Charlotte Frankie the whole time. When Jessica took them away at the end of the afternoon, Charlotte had become even more upset, and in the end it had been decided that it wasn’t in her best interests to have any more visits from Jason and Alison. Jessica would talk about them all the time when she came to visit, about how Alison had this group of four best friends she did everything with, about how they had gone on a trip and Jason and Alison had fought the entire time. Maybe Jessica thought that she was cheering Charlotte up by telling her all these stories. Instead, all she was achieving was making Charlotte wish she could be there with them, taking all these trips, even fighting with the siblings she had been denied the chance to get to know.

One year on her birthday, Jessica had given Charlotte a doll with long blonde hair, which Charlotte had named Alison. As Charlotte dressed the doll, brushed her hair, she imagined what it would be like to be able to be real sisters with Alison, to do her hair and clothes for her. If Jessica had bought her any more dolls, Charlotte would have given them the same names as Alison’s best friends: Spencer, Aria, Hanna and Emily. But Jessica only bought her the one. However, Charlotte knew it didn’t matter. One day, she would meet the real people behind the names, get to build the relationship she always wanted with Alison.

 

It had been a sudden impulse to go to Rosewood High that day to see whether she could catch a glimpse of Jason. She knew what he looked like; Jessica had regularly shown her photographs through the years. For one insane moment, Charlotte wondered if Jason would recognise her. Then she pushed that from her mind. Why would he? He hadn’t seen her for years, after all, and when he had last seen her she had still been Charles.

She had no clear plan in mind for what she would do when she saw him, even as she stopped some random guy and asked “Hey, you seen Jason DiLaurentis anywhere?” The kid had shrugged and said “Last time I saw him he was going to get his picture taken for the yearbook.” Charlotte had thanked him, made her way in the direction indicated to where Jason was glowering for the camera. “Would it kill you to smile?” she had asked. Jason had turned around and scowled “What’s it to you?”

“Rude, much?” Charlotte had said. Jason had looked at her properly for the first time, but showed no signs of recognition (“So, I guess that answers that question,” Charlotte had thought) as he suggested that they start over. “So, do you even go to school here?” Charlotte admitted she didn’t, before making some joke about being the prettiest girl in the yearbook. But it had been accepted without question, and a few weeks later Charlotte laughed when she saw her own picture in Jason’s copy of the book. 

She hadn’t started out with the intention of getting into a relationship with Jason. It had just kind of happened that way, that he had thought that was the reason she had started chatting to him, and at the time Charlotte had just gone along with it thinking that it didn’t need to go too far, they could meet socially but without getting into any kind of relationship, then at some point, she would tell him the truth about who she really was. Then one day, she had casually asked Jason whether he had any siblings and Jason had said “I have one sister, Alison. That’s it.” No mention of the brother he had once known. There didn’t seem a way for Charlotte to bring it up at the time, so she left it at that. But a few weeks later, when Jason had taken her to his friend Eric Kahn’s birthday party, and Eric had started teasing their friend Garrett that the reason why he wouldn’t tell them who he was dating was because the girlfriend was imaginary, Jason had joined in with “Yeah, really? I had an imaginary friend called Charlie when I was, what, seven?”

So that was what their parents had told him. Jason had been led to believe that Charlotte was nothing more than an imaginary friend. With that one unwitting jokey remark, Charlotte felt that she had been erased from history in a way that she had never felt when she had stood beside the grave of her former identity Charles DiLaurentis. Ian, Melissa, Garrett and Eric were all busy laughing with Jason about the imaginary friend. None of them noticed as Charlotte detached herself from the group, lost herself in the crowd, ran without looking back, desperate to escape before Jason or any of them saw her reaction. By the time Melissa eventually found her in the bathroom, Charlotte had pulled herself together enough to make up some story about how she’d had a little too much to drink.

Melissa had frowned. “You had about two beers.”

Charlotte had mumbled something about not having had enough to eat beforehand and Melissa seemed to buy it, as did Jason and the others when they made their way back to them. By that time they’d moved away from the subject of imaginary friends, and Charlotte just joined in mechanically with whatever the hell they were talking about. But inside she was shaking. Her parents had actually described her to Jason as his imaginary friend?

In that moment Charlotte knew she couldn’t tell Jason who she really was, not yet.

The first time she met Alison, Jason hadn’t been very happy about it because he’d been hoping for them to have the house to themselves. But apart from the obvious reason why Charlotte was relieved that wasn’t the case, she’d been wondering for so long what her sister would be like. They’d been watching some stupid music video when Alison had wandered in, chatting on her phone to someone named Emily, ignoring Jason’s attempts to shut her up. 

“Anyway, gotta go, Em, talk to you tomorrow,” Alison had said as she hung up before turning to Cece and introducing herself, complimenting her on whatever she’d been wearing, made some joke about whatever artist was performing at the time. They’d carried on chatting, and at one point Alison had asked what Charlotte was doing dating Jason, because she seemed too normal to be one of her brother’s girlfriends. Charlotte had laughed, made some jokey remark, and then changed the subject. But she now had what she wanted: her brother and her sister back in her life again.

 

One time, Charlotte had mentioned to Alison that she was planning to go to some fraternity party, and Alison had decided to go along with her friends. Charlotte had watched them from a distance, watching the girls with her and wondering which of the names Alison had mentioned so often went with which face (although she thought she had some idea which one was Emily – the one whose eyes followed Alison wherever she went). Ian Thomas had been there, flirting with some girl Charlotte didn’t know. She looked around for Alison, and instantly knew that Alison had seen it too. Charlotte had attempted to try and get to Alison, distract her somehow, but then some idiot got in her way, causing her to lose them. By the time Charlotte got there, the girl was lying at the foot of the stairs, Alison standing as if in shock, as if she only just realised what she had done. 

Charlotte grabbed her by the shoulders. “Go. You were never here. I’ll take care of this.”

Alison glanced back at the girl. “Cece..”

“Go!” Charlotte exclaimed, giving Alison a push. They were dressed in similar enough clothing, they looked enough alike...she could pull this off. And it worked. As the girl woke up, saw Charlotte standing there, she pointed at her, shrieked “It was her!”

Charlotte was asked to leave her classes at UPenn after that. But she wasn’t as upset as she would later let on. She’d already covered so much of that work in Radley anyway. And besides, everyone knew Radley’s security was a joke. She could sneak in and out as much as she liked without anyone ever knowing, God knew Bethany had pulled it off enough times. Besides, after all those years she had been forced to be separated from Alison and Jason, and her being wrongly blamed for Mrs Cavanaugh’s death, the worst had already happened to Charlotte. Whereas if Alison had taken the blame for pushing that girl, it would have been a lot worse for her. This way she still had her future ahead of her. So Charlotte could accept being booted out of her classes and even be happy about it. Because what could be better than knowing she had saved her sister’s future?

 

The day when Jason told her that he’d asked his parents if he could take her on the family holiday to Cape May that summer, part of Charlotte had wondered if she should really go. It happened that she’d never “met the parents” as yet, although Jason had talked about it, and she wasn’t sure if that was the best moment. But then she wondered why she should still remain a secret. Maybe this trip was the best way to bring things out in the open, after all.

She didn’t know quite what to expect from the encounter with them, yet in a strange way, it was neither Kenneth looking at her and shaking her hand as though he’d never met her before, nor was it Jessica admitting that she had allowed Kenneth to believe that “Charles” had died. Charlotte didn’t know which was worse: Jason believing she had been imaginary, Kenneth believing her dead, or Alison not knowing of her existence at all. At one point on the trip, Alison had unwittingly made some allusion along those lines, about how it was worse not to be talked about than to be talked about. Charlotte had agreed and left it at that, turning away so that Alison wouldn’t see her reaction. But in that moment, she felt that Alison’s ignorance of her very existence was the worst of the three.

The trip had been awkward in a lot of ways. At one point Kenneth had tried to make conversation by asking Charlotte what her parents did. She hadn’t planned for that conversation, and had ended up blurting something out about how she no longer had anything to do with them. Jason had looked shocked and asked why Charlotte had never told him that before. Charlotte had panicked and just said that she didn’t like to talk about it. Jessica had sat rigidly in her seat, staring at the SUV in front, not looking at anyone. In the end, Alison had started talking about something else, and that had been the end of it. In that moment, Charlotte had wondered what would have happened if she had said something like “I don’t know, what do you do, Daddy?” and announced her true identity to everyone in the car. Well, she would never know now. But she determined that she would find the right time on that trip to tell Alison who she really was.

 

Charlotte wondered what Alison would have thought if she knew what she was planning. Truth was, it had been Alison who had given her the idea in the first place when she had written those letters to the girl she called Pigskin and signed her friend Emily’s name. But even as she wrote the letters to Bethany, imitating some of the peculiarities of Alison’s handwriting in case the letters were ever intercepted, Charlotte knew she couldn’t tell Alison what she was planning. Alison didn’t know anything of the story of Bethany, and once Charlotte knew that Alison actually knew Mrs Cavanaugh’s son Toby, she had known that it was better that way. 

It had happened on the trip to Cape May, when Charlotte had got up to get a drink one night and overheard an argument between her parents where Kenneth had accused Jessica of having an affair with Bethany Young’s father. The fact that Jessica was having another affair didn’t come as a surprise to Charlotte, who knew by that point that Peter Hastings was Jason’s real father. But Bethany Young’s father? Really?

Although in one way, Charlotte wasn’t upset by this. It gave her the opportunity to fix Bethany once and for all. Those years when she had almost drowned in her own drool, medicated up to the eyeballs on drugs she didn’t even need, considered too dangerous to be allowed anywhere near her own family, and it was all because of Bethany. Bethany had taken everything from Charlotte, and now Charlotte needed to find a way to do the same to her.

When Charlotte had heard the argument, she had known that that wasn’t the time to bring up her true identity. She’d do that later, after she had taken care of Bethany.

 

It was never supposed to have happened that way. Alison wasn’t even supposed to be there. Charlotte had been under the impression that she was staying the night at her friend Spencer’s. That was why she had chosen that night, to make sure Alison was out of the way for when it all went down.

She’d had it all worked out. Bethany was supposed to turn up under the impression she was meeting Alison, to try and find some way of breaking up this affair between their parents. Instead, she was going to be faced with Charlotte. When Charlotte had seen this person wandering around, with long blonde hair, dressed in the yellow top that she owned and Bethany was always eyeing up, of course she had thought it was Bethany. As she had picked up a rock that she had placed there in readiness, Charlotte thought of the day when Bethany had pushed Marion Cavanaugh and allowed everyone to think that Charlotte was responsible. She thought of all the medication that had been forced on her that she had never needed, the time she had felt trapped in her own body in a way she had sworn she would never feel again as she was forced to take the medication that left her unable to do anything but choke on her own drool, the label of explosive personality disorder falsely applied to her, the time she had been forced to be separated from her own siblings because everyone believed she was a danger to herself and others. As she picked up the rock and smashed it down on the girl’s head, Charlotte was relieved that Bethany could never hurt anyone again.

Then she heard Jessica screaming “What have you done?” And as Jessica had turned the body over, and Charlotte had realised it was Alison, she finally knew just what she had done. She had killed the sister she had loved, just as her father had accused her of trying to do all those years ago.

Jessica had covered it up. She’d had that creepy cop Wilden take her back to Radley and come up with some story. But Charlotte didn’t feel that Radley, with her outside visits now revoked and security stepped up, was any different to the prison she would otherwise have faced. Even the fact that Bethany had never returned to Radley didn’t help.

Charlotte had begged to be able to say goodbye to Jason rather than just let him think she had disappeared. Instead, Jessica had sent him a message from the phone she had been using, giving no real explanation. In some way, it was easier for her to no longer have to pretend to be someone that she wasn’t, to have to fight off his advances knowing that it could never be. But she hoped that one day she would get the chance to see Jason again, to come to him as herself, to tell him the whole truth.

When a new girl called Mona was brought into Radley one day, it didn’t take Charlotte long to realise that this was the person called Loser Mona who Alison used to talk about. All it took was to tell a few stories she had heard from Alison, and Mona was eating out of her hand. She was so doped up, she couldn’t tell the difference between Charlotte and Alison anyway. Mona would talk about all these things that had happened with Alison and her friends, and Charlotte stored all the information up. Then one day Mona had said “If they knew you were still alive, Ali, I don’t think they would even care. Hanna said it was easier without having you around. They say they’re happier now, they’re better friends without you. They don’t miss you.”

So, these people, the girls Ali had described as her best friends in the world, they didn’t even miss her now that she was gone? Even the Emily person who was supposed to have loved her so much>

Charlotte’s first attempt at revenge hadn’t worked out. But now she had new people to take revenge against. Emily Fields, Hanna Marin, Spencer Hastings, Aria Montgomery. And one day, she would get out of Radley, finish the game that Mona started, to pay them all back for not loving Alison in the way that she deserved.


End file.
